Obama Comes Out Swinging

Obama spoke to reporters Wednesday in his first post-election press conference.

President Barack Obama reiterated his demand for tax hikes on the wealthy Wednesday, claimed a mandate to help the middle class, and pushed back strongly against attacks on U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and his handling of the attacks in Benghazi in his first post-election press conference.

“I want a big deal, I want a comprehensive deal,” he said ahead of talks Friday with congressional leaders on resolving the fiscal cliff.

Obama said he is prepared to make tough decisions on entitlement savings alongside new revenue, and is “very eager” to do tax reform that would make the code more efficient.

But he expressed skepticism about GOP proposals to find new revenue without raising the top tax rate from 35 percent.

“It’s very difficult to see how you make up that trillion dollars — if we’re serious about deficit reduction — just by closing loopholes and deductions,” Obama said. “You know, the math tends not to work.”

Still, Obama said that he would be willing to listen to Republican ideas on that count.

“I’m not going to just slam the door in their face,” he said.

He said the only way the fiscal cliff would hit is if Republicans don’t agree to extend tax relief for the middle class. And in the meantime, he said, he was confident a deal could be reached.

“I believe this is solvable. ... I’m confident it can be done,” Obama said, adding that the decisions that need to be made aren’t easy but the math isn’t difficult. “It really is arithmetic,” he said. “It is not calculus.”

But he said that using dynamic scoring or unnamed loophole cuts would not be acceptable ways to generate revenue. Obama said he did not want to be caught in a situation where the wealthy escape paying higher taxes and the middle class one way or another has to make up the difference several months down the line.

Obama also said that his position on extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy is not new and was repeatedly argued on the campaign trail. “This shouldn’t surprise anybody,” he said. “Every voter out there understood” what his position was, and he cited polls showing that an even greater majority back his position on the tax cuts than voted for him.

“We’ve got a clear majority of the American people,” he said.

He urged House Republicans to “take the edge off” the fiscal cliff by immediately extending Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class by taking up a Senate-passed bill to do just that. He made no mention of the expiring payroll tax cut, but prefaced his remarks that the year-end negotiations should first be about growing the economy.